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Men, Women, and Boats

S >> Stephen Crane >> Men, Women, and Boats




In disjointed sentences the cook and the correspondent argued as to the
difference between a life-saving station and a house of refuge. The cook
had said: "There's a house of refuge just north of the Mosquito Inlet
Light, and as soon as they see us, they'll come off in their boat and
pick us up."

"As soon as who see us?" said the correspondent.

"The crew," said the cook.

"Houses of refuge don't have crews," said the correspondent. "As I
understand them, they are only places where clothes and grub are stored
for the benefit of shipwrecked people. They don't carry crews."

"Oh, yes, they do," said the cook.

"No, they don't," said the correspondent.

"Well, we're not there yet, anyhow," said the oiler, in the stern.

"Well," said the cook, "perhaps it's not a house of refuge that I'm
thinking of as being near Mosquito Inlet Light. Perhaps it's a life-
saving station."

"We're not there yet," said the oiler, in the stern.


II

As the boat bounced from the top of each wave, the wind tore through the
hair of the hatless men, and as the craft plopped her stern down again
the spray splashed past them. The crest of each of these waves was a
hill, from the top of which the men surveyed, for a moment, a broad
tumultuous expanse, shining and wind-riven. It was probably splendid. It
was probably glorious, this play of the free sea, wild with lights of
emerald and white and amber.

"Bully good thing it's an on-shore wind," said the cook; "If not, where
would we be? Wouldn't have a show."

"That's right," said the correspondent.

The busy oiler nodded his assent.

Then the captain, in the bow, chuckled in a way that expressed humor,
contempt, tragedy, all in one. "Do you think We've got much of a show
now, boys?" said he.

Whereupon the three were silent, save for a trifle of hemming and
hawing. To express any particular optimism at this time they felt to be
childish and stupid, but they all doubtless possessed this sense of the
situation in their mind. A young man thinks doggedly at such times. On
the other hand, the ethics of their condition was decidedly against any
open suggestion of hopelessness. So they were silent.

"Oh, well," said the captain, soothing his children, "We'll get ashore
all right."

But there was that in his tone which made them think, so the oiler
quoth: "Yes! If this wind holds!"

The cook was bailing: "Yes! If we don't catch hell in the surf."

Canton flannel gulls flew near and far. Sometimes they sat down on the
sea, near patches of brown seaweed that rolled on the waves with a
movement like carpets on a line in a gale. The birds sat comfortably in
groups, and they were envied by some in the dingey, for the wrath of the
sea was no more to them than it was to a covey of prairie chickens a
thousand miles inland. Often they came very close and stared at the men
with black bead-like eyes. At these times they were uncanny and sinister
in their unblinking scrutiny, and the men hooted angrily at them,
telling them to be gone. One came, and evidently decided to alight on
the top of the captain's head. The bird flew parallel to the boat and
did not circle, but made short sidelong jumps in the air in chicken-
fashion. His black eyes were wistfully fixed upon the captain's head.
"Ugly brute," said the oiler to the bird. "You look as if you were made
with a jack-knife." The cook and the correspondent swore darkly at the
creature. The captain naturally wished to knock it away with the end of
the heavy painter; but he did not dare do it, because anything
resembling an emphatic gesture would have capsized this freighted boat,
and so with his open hand, the captain gently and carefully waved the
gull away. After it had been discouraged from the pursuit the captain
breathed easier on account of his hair, and others breathed easier
because the bird struck their minds at this time as being somehow
grewsome and ominous.

In the meantime the oiler and the correspondent rowed And also they
rowed.

They sat together in the same seat, and each rowed an oar. Then the
oiler took both oars; then the correspondent took both oars; then the
oiler; then the correspondent. They rowed and they rowed. The very
ticklish part of the business was when the time came for the reclining
one in the stern to take his turn at the oars. By the very last star of
truth, it is easier to steal eggs from under a hen than it was to change
seats in the dingey. First the man in the stern slid his hand along the
thwart and moved with care, as if he were of Sèvres. Then the man in the
rowing seat slid his hand along the other thwart. It was all done with
most extraordinary care. As the two sidled past each other, the whole
party kept watchful eyes on the coming wave, and the captain cried:
"Look out now! Steady there!"

The brown mats of seaweed that appeared from time to time were like
islands, bits of earth. They were traveling, apparently, neither one way
nor the other. They were, to all intents, stationary. They informed the
men in the boat that it was making progress slowly toward the land.

The captain, rearing cautiously in the bow, after the dingey soared on a
great swell, said that he had seen the light-house at Mosquito Inlet.
Presently the cook remarked that he had seen it. The correspondent was
at the oars then, and for some reason he too wished to look at the
lighthouse, but his back was toward the far shore and the waves were
important, and for some time he could not seize an opportunity to turn
his head. But at last there came a wave more gentle than the others, and
when at the crest of it he swiftly scoured the western horizon.

"See it?" said the captain.

"No," said the correspondent slowly, "I didn't see anything."

"Look again," said the captain. He pointed. "It's exactly in that
direction."

At the top of another wave, the correspondent did as he was bid, and
this time his eyes chanced on a small still thing on the edge of the
swaying horizon. It was precisely like the point of a pin. It took an
anxious eye to find a light house so tiny.

"Think we'll make it, captain?"

"If this wind holds and the boat don't swamp, we can't do much else,"
said the captain.

The little boat, lifted by each towering sea, and splashed viciously by
the crests, made progress that in the absence of seaweed was not
apparent to those in her. She seemed just a wee thing wallowing,
miraculously top-up, at the mercy of five oceans. Occasionally, a great
spread of water, like white flames, swarmed into her.

"Bail her, cook," said the captain serenely.

"All right, captain," said the cheerful cook.


III

It would be difficult to describe the subtle brotherhood of men that was
here established on the seas. No one said that it was so. No one
mentioned it. But it dwelt in the boat, and each man felt it warm him.
They were a captain, an oiler, a cook, and a correspondent, and they
were friends, friends in a more curiously iron-bound degree than may be
common. The hurt captain, lying against the water-jar in the bow, spoke
always in a low voice and calmly, but he could never command a more
ready and swiftly obedient crew than the motley three of the dingey. It
was more than a mere recognition of what was best for the common safety.
There was surely in it a quality that was personal and heartfelt. And
after this devotion to the commander of the boat there was this
comradeship that the correspondent, for instance, who had been taught to
be cynical of men, knew even at the time was the best experience of his
life. But no one said that it was so. No one mentioned it.

"I wish we had a sail," remarked the captain. "We might try my overcoat
on the end of an oar and give you two boys a chance to rest." So the
cook and the correspondent held the mast and spread wide the overcoat.
The oiler steered, and the little boat made good way with her new rig.
Sometimes the oiler had to scull sharply to keep a sea from breaking
into the boat, but otherwise sailing was a success.

Meanwhile the lighthouse had been growing slowly larger. It had now
almost assumed color, and appeared like a little grey shadow on the sky.
The man at the oars could not be prevented from turning his head rather
often to try for a glimpse of this little grey shadow.

At last, from the top of each wave the men in the tossing boat could see
land. Even as the lighthouse was an upright shadow on the sky, this land
seemed but a long black shadow on the sea. It certainly was thinner than
paper. "We must be about opposite New Smyrna," said the cook, who had
coasted this shore often in schooners. "Captain, by the way, I believe
they abandoned that life-saving station there about a year ago."

"Did they?" said the captain.

The wind slowly died away. The cook and the correspondent were not now
obliged to slave in order to hold high the oar. But the waves continued
their old impetuous swooping at the dingey, and the little craft, no
longer under way, struggled woundily over them. The oiler or the
correspondent took the oars again.

Shipwrecks are _à propos_ of nothing. If men could only train for
them and have them occur when the men had reached pink condition, there
would be less drowning at sea. Of the four in the dingey none had slept
any time worth mentioning for two days and two nights previous to
embarking in the dingey, and in the excitement of clambering about the
deck of a foundering ship they had also forgotten to eat heartily.

For these reasons, and for others, neither the oiler nor the
correspondent was fond of rowing at this time. The correspondent
wondered ingenuously how in the name of all that was sane could there be
people who thought it amusing to row a boat. It was not an amusement; it
was a diabolical punishment, and even a genius of mental aberrations
could never conclude that it was anything but a horror to the muscles
and a crime against the back. He mentioned to the boat in general how
the amusement of rowing struck him, and the weary-faced oiler smiled in
full sympathy. Previously to the foundering, by the way, the oiler had
worked double-watch in the engine-room of the ship.

"Take her easy, now, boys," said the captain. "Don't spend yourselves.
If we have to run a surf you'll need all your strength, because we'll
sure have to swim for it. Take your time."

Slowly the land arose from the sea. From a black line it became a line
of black and a line of white, trees and sand. Finally, the captain said
that he could make out a house on the shore. "That's the house of
refuge, sure," said the cook. "They'll see us before long, and come out
after us."

The distant lighthouse reared high. "The keeper ought to be able to make
us out now, if he's looking through a glass," said the captain. "He'll
notify the life-saving people."

"None of those other boats could have got ashore to give word of the
wreck," said the oiler, in a low voice. "Else the lifeboat would be out
hunting us."

Slowly and beautifully the land loomed out of the sea. The wind came
again. It had veered from the north-east to the south-east. Finally, a
new sound struck the ears of the men in the boat. It was the low thunder
of the surf on the shore. "We'll never be able to make the lighthouse
now," said the captain. "Swing her head a little more north, Billie,"
said he.

"'A little more north,' sir," said the oiler.

Whereupon the little boat turned her nose once more down the wind, and
all but the oarsman watched the shore grow. Under the influence of this
expansion doubt and direful apprehension was leaving the minds of the
men. The management of the boat was still most absorbing, but it could
not prevent a quiet cheerfulness. In an hour, perhaps, they would be
ashore.

Their backbones had become thoroughly used to balancing in the boat, and
they now rode this wild colt of a dingey like circus men. The
correspondent thought that he had been drenched to the skin, but
happening to feel in the top pocket of his coat, he found therein eight
cigars. Four of them were soaked with sea-water; four were perfectly
scathless. After a search, somebody produced three dry matches, and
thereupon the four waifs rode impudently in their little boat, and with
an assurance of an impending rescue shining in their eyes, puffed at the
big cigars and judged well and ill of all men. Everybody took a drink of
water.


IV

"Cook," remarked the captain, "there don't seem to be any signs of life
about your house of refuge."

"No," replied the cook. "Funny they don't see us!"

A broad stretch of lowly coast lay before the eyes of the men. It was of
dunes topped with dark vegetation. The roar of the surf was plain, and
sometimes they could see the white lip of a wave as it spun up the
beach. A tiny house was blocked out black upon the sky. Southward, the
slim lighthouse lifted its little grey length.

Tide, wind, and waves were swinging the dingey northward. "Funny they
don't see us," said the men.

The surf's roar was here dulled, but its tone was, nevertheless,
thunderous and mighty. As the boat swam over the great rollers, the men
sat listening to this roar. "We'll swamp sure," said everybody.

It is fair to say here that there was not a life-saving station within
twenty miles in either direction, but the men did not know this fact,
and in consequence they made dark and opprobrious remarks concerning the
eyesight of the nation's life-savers. Four scowling men sat in the
dingey and surpassed records in the invention of epithets.

"Funny they don't see us."

The lightheartedness of a former time had completely faded. To their
sharpened minds it was easy to conjure pictures of all kinds of
incompetency and blindness and, indeed, cowardice. There was the shore
of the populous land, and it was bitter and bitter to them that from it
came no sign.

"Well," said the captain, ultimately, "I suppose we'll have to make a
try for ourselves. If we stay out here too long, we'll none of us have
strength left to swim after the boat swamps."

And so the oiler, who was at the oars, turned the boat straight for the
shore. There was a sudden tightening of muscle. There was some thinking.

"If we don't all get ashore--" said the captain. "If we don't all get
ashore, I suppose you fellows know where to send news of my finish?"

They then briefly exchanged some addresses and admonitions. As for the
reflections of the men, there was a great deal of rage in them.
Perchance they might be formulated thus: "If I am going to be drowned--
if I am going to be drowned--if I am going to be drowned, why, in the
name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus
far and contemplate sand and trees? Was I brought here merely to have my
nose dragged away as I was about to nibble the sacred cheese of life? It
is preposterous. If this old ninny-woman, Fate, cannot do better than
this, she should be deprived of the management of men's fortunes. She is
an old hen who knows not her intention. If she has decided to drown me,
why did she not do it in the beginning and save me all this trouble? The
whole affair is absurd.... But no, she cannot mean to drown me. She dare
not drown me. She cannot drown me. Not after all this work." Afterward
the man might have had an impulse to shake his fist at the clouds: "Just
you drown me, now, and then hear what I call you!"

The billows that came at this time were more formidable. They seemed
always just about to break and roll over the little boat in a turmoil of
foam. There was a preparatory and long growl in the speech of them. No
mind unused to the sea would have concluded that the dingey could ascend
these sheer heights in time. The shore was still afar. The oiler was a
wily surfman. "Boys," he said swiftly, "she won't live three minutes
more, and we're too far out to swim. Shall I take her to sea again,
captain?"

"Yes! Go ahead!" said the captain.

This oiler, by a series of quick miracles, and fast and steady
oarsmanship, turned the boat in the middle of the surf and took her
safely to sea again.

There was a considerable silence as the boat bumped over the furrowed
sea to deeper water. Then somebody in gloom spoke. "Well, anyhow, they
must have seen us from the shore by now."

The gulls went in slanting flight up the wind toward the grey desolate
east. A squall, marked by dingy clouds, and clouds brick-red, like smoke
from a burning building, appeared from the south-east.

"What do you think of those life-saving people? Ain't they peaches?'

"Funny they haven't seen us."

"Maybe they think we're out here for sport! Maybe they think we're
fishin'. Maybe they think we're damned fools."

It was a long afternoon. A changed tide tried to force them southward,
but the wind and wave said northward. Far ahead, where coast-line, sea,
and sky formed their mighty angle, there were little dots which seemed
to indicate a city on the shore.

"St. Augustine?"

The captain shook his head. "Too near Mosquito Inlet."

And the oiler rowed, and then the correspondent rowed. Then the oiler
rowed. It was a weary business. The human back can become the seat of
more aches and pains than are registered in books for the composite
anatomy of a regiment. It is a limited area, but it can become the
theatre of innumerable muscular conflicts, tangles, wrenches, knots, and
other comforts.

"Did you ever like to row, Billie?" asked the correspondent.

"No," said the oiler. "Hang it!"

When one exchanged the rowing-seat for a place in the bottom of the
boat, he suffered a bodily depression that caused him to be careless of
everything save an obligation to wiggle one finger. There was cold sea-
water swashing to and fro in the boat, and he lay in it. His head,
pillowed on a thwart, was within an inch of the swirl of a wave crest,
and sometimes a particularly obstreperous sea came in-board and drenched
him once more. But these matters did not annoy him. It is almost certain
that if the boat had capsized he would have tumbled comfortably out upon
the ocean as if he felt sure that it was a great soft mattress.

"Look! There's a man on the shore!"

"Where?"

"There! See 'im? See 'im?"

"Yes, sure! He's walking along."

"Now he's stopped. Look! He's facing us!"

"He's waving at us!"

"So he is! By thunder!"

"Ah, now we're all right! Now we're all right! There'll be a boat out
here for us in half-an-hour."

"He's going on. He's running. He's going up to that house there."

The remote beach seemed lower than the sea, and it required a searching
glance to discern the little black figure. The captain saw a floating
stick and they rowed to it. A bath-towel was by some weird chance in the
boat, and, tying this on the stick, the captain waved it. The oarsman
did not dare turn his head, so he was obliged to ask questions.

"What's he doing now?"

"He's standing still again. He's looking, I think.... There he goes
again. Toward the house.... Now he's stopped again."

"Is he waving at us?"

"No, not now! he was, though."

"Look! There comes another man!"

"He's running."

"Look at him go, would you."

"Why, he's on a bicycle. Now he's met the other man. They're both waving
at us. Look!"

"There comes something up the beach."

"What the devil is that thing?"

"Why it looks like a boat."

"Why, certainly it's a boat."

"No, it's on wheels."

"Yes, so it is. Well, that must be the life-boat. They drag them along
shore on a wagon."

"That's the life-boat, sure."

"No, by ----, it's--it's an omnibus."

"I tell you it's a life-boat."

"It is not! It's an omnibus. I can see it plain. See? One of these big
hotel omnibuses."

"By thunder, you're right. It's an omnibus, sure as fate. What do you
suppose they are doing with an omnibus? Maybe they are going around
collecting the life-crew, hey?"

"That's it, likely. Look! There's a fellow waving a little black flag.
He's standing on the steps of the omnibus. There come those other two
fellows. Now they're all talking together. Look at the fellow with the
flag. Maybe he ain't waving it."

"That ain't a flag, is it? That's his coat. Why, certainly, that's his
coat."

"So it is. It's his coat. He's taken it off and is waving it around his
head. But would you look at him swing it."

"Oh, say, there isn't any life-saving station there. That's just a
winter resort hotel omnibus that has brought over some of the boarders
to see us drown."

"What's that idiot with the coat mean? What's he signaling, anyhow?"

"It looks as if he were trying to tell us to go north. There must be a
life-saving station up there."

"No! He thinks we're fishing. Just giving us a merry hand. See? Ah,
there, Willie!"

"Well, I wish I could make something out of those signals. What do you
suppose he means?"

"He don't mean anything. He's just playing."

"Well, if he'd just signal us to try the surf again, or to go to sea and
wait, or go north, or go south, or go to hell--there would be some
reason in it. But look at him. He just stands there and keeps his coat
revolving like a wheel. The ass!"

"There come more people."

"Now there's quite a mob. Look! Isn't that a boat?"

"Where? Oh, I see where you mean. No, that's no boat."

"That fellow is still waving his coat."

"He must think we like to see him do that. Why don't he quit it? It
don't mean anything."

"I don't know. I think he is trying to make us go north. It must be that
there's a life-saving station there somewhere."

"Say, he ain't tired yet. Look at 'im wave."

"Wonder how long he can keep that up. He's been revolving his coat ever
since he caught sight of us. He's an idiot. Why aren't they getting men
to bring a boat out? A fishing boat--one of those big yawls--could come
out here all right. Why don't he do something?"

"Oh, it's all right, now."

"They'll have a boat out here for us in less than no time, now that
they've seen us."

A faint yellow tone came into the sky over the low land. The shadows on
the sea slowly deepened. The wind bore coldness with it, and the men
began to shiver.

"Holy smoke!" said one, allowing his voice to express his impious mood,
"if we keep on monkeying out here! If we've got to flounder out here all
night!"

"Oh, we'll never have to stay here all night! Don't you worry. They've
seen us now, and it won't be long before they'll come chasing out after
us."

The shore grew dusky. The man waving a coat blended gradually into this
gloom, and it swallowed in the same manner the omnibus and the group of
people. The spray, when it dashed uproariously over the side, made the
voyagers shrink and swear like men who were being branded.

"I'd like to catch the chump who waved the coat. I feel like soaking him
one, just for luck."

"Why? What did he do?"

"Oh, nothing, but then he seemed so damned cheerful."

In the meantime the oiler rowed, and then the correspondent rowed, and
then the oiler rowed. Grey-faced and bowed forward, they mechanically,
turn by turn, plied the leaden oars. The form of the lighthouse had
vanished from the southern horizon, but finally a pale star appeared,
just lifting from the sea. The streaked saffron in the west passed
before the all-merging darkness, and the sea to the east was black. The
land had vanished, and was expressed only by the low and drear thunder
of the surf.

"If I am going to be drowned--if I am going to be drowned--if I am going
to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea,
was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees? Was I
brought here merely to have my nose dragged away as I was about to
nibble the sacred cheese of life?"

The patient captain, drooped over the water-jar, was sometimes obliged
to speak to the oarsman.

"Keep her head up! Keep her head up!"

"'Keep her head up,' sir." The voices were weary and low.

This was surely a quiet evening. All save the oarsman lay heavily and
listlessly in the boat's bottom. As for him, his eyes were just capable
of noting the tall black waves that swept forward in a most sinister
silence, save for an occasional subdued growl of a crest.

The cook's head was on a thwart, and he looked without interest at the
water under his nose. He was deep in other scenes. Finally he spoke.
"Billie," he murmured, dreamfully, "what kind of pie do you like best?"


V

"Pie," said the oiler and the correspondent, agitatedly. "Don't talk
about those things, blast you!"

"Well," said the cook, "I was just thinking about ham sandwiches, and--"

A night on the sea in an open boat is a long night. As darkness settled
finally, the shine of the light, lifting from the sea in the south,
changed to full gold. On the northern horizon a new light appeared, a
small bluish gleam on the edge of the waters. These two lights were the
furniture of the world. Otherwise there was nothing but waves.

Two men huddled in the stern, and distances were so magnificent in the
dingey that the rower was enabled to keep his feet partly warmed by
thrusting them under his companions. Their legs indeed extended far
under the rowing-seat until they touched the feet of the captain
forward. Sometimes, despite the efforts of the tired oarsman, a wave
came piling into the boat, an icy wave of the night, and the chilling
water soaked them anew. They would twist their bodies for a moment and
groan, and sleep the dead sleep once more, while the water in the boat
gurgled about them as the craft rocked.

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